


an awfully big adventure

by clutzycricket



Category: Dracula & Related Fandoms
Genre: Crack Treated Seriously, Gen, Multiple Crossovers, SHIELD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-23
Updated: 2015-06-23
Packaged: 2018-04-05 18:38:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 896
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4190703
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clutzycricket/pseuds/clutzycricket
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Death is not the end, nor is a cemetery, at the hands of those who love her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	an awfully big adventure

Lucy isn’t… lucid for a while, when she is

(buried, locked away, sacrificed) 

but there are soothing hands on her shoulders, and a calming voice in her ear, in a tone much like Mina’s schoolmistress’ tones. 

(She’d missed Mina so, and Kate, plead for them to come to her, but Mina was with Jonathan as a good wife should, and he would return her devotion, but Kate wasn’t there and she was too tired for anger at whoever didn’t listen to her.)

She was taken out of her tomb like a sensible Juliet, a cloak thrown over her shoulders as they walked among the quiet dead. The probably quiet dead.

And then Lucy was free, and not quite sure what to do with it.

 _ **On one path**_ , she goes to Paris, to see the opera, and hears rumors of a ghost and a music student. 

(for the dead may travel fast, but they also hear the most delicious gossip, irene agrees)

The girl who was buried but not killed raises her chin and finds a girl with fire in her voice, with whom she speaks of angels and phantoms, daylight lovers and the dangers we dismiss as dreams. And she wanders the Opera without fear, for vampires are mist and shadow and what is a lasso against that?

 ** _On another_** , she is in England again, visiting Mina’s too-early grave, wondering dark thoughts she should perhaps not be wondering, when she sees the girl.

She seems terribly young- that is to say, the age Lucy looks to be, normally, when she remembers to eat normally.

(she did love food once- arthur had teased her for it, while quincy spun tales of the most outrageous meals she had refused to believe existed. now her food is blood and tangled with…)

“Do you mind if I sit with you?” she said, knowing her accent was more French then Yorkshire, now, as Peggy had pointed out more than once. She had stayed through both world wars, driving ambulances, mostly.

“No, no,” the girl said. “I shouldn’t be alone, probably.”

So Lucy sat with her, until the girl spoke.

“My name is Susan,” she said, and it took a moment for her to stop crying, after Lucy told her name.

Her family had been lost in a train wreck, and there was a terrible grief and bitterness there, and New York were so very far away…

At a lonely graveyard, the dead girl and the once and future queen took hands and walked into the whirl of life, for holding onto the past was good, but to let it consume you would turn you into those ravening monsters in the castle in the mountains.

Later, the gentle queen would speak of lions that spoke and wardrobes, and the Light of Whitby would speak of flying. Only once would they speak of growing too old, of queens of winter, of men who came in dreams with blood on their lips and doctors who lied.

She laughed, when Susan married Howard, and took care not to look too young.

 _ **On a third path**_ , she traveled the world, taking photos, becoming a doctor and laughing when the other residents teased her about how strong she was while she trained.

She smiled when she saw Steve was back, and waited for him to find her. The good captain knew about her… quirks. She spoke and reminded him of regrets, her own experiences, and led him by the ear to Peggy, because mortals were fragile and love was important. So was closure.

So she heard the whispers as much as anyone, of a wealthy businessman from Eastern Europe trying to make a foothold in New York. She was in Seattle, enjoying the gloom and rain not-quite-like home and wondering where she should wander next, and there were no sad eyed girls to save, no living girls held in check, because the only girls Lucy were thinking of were dead, one truly

( _ **pleasepleaseplease**_ )

and one whose reflection she had not seen in over a century.

She hitchhiked, because it was interesting and because she was wretched at sitting still for too long, and she went to a tiny, overgrown island, more a jungle and a ruin. 

She knew herself, knew she was clever and a girl of Whitby and London and those busy cities, that she refused to root herself and rot as he had once.

She also had Peggy’s band of armed misfits, if need be, but she knew the perils of trusting in gallants to do your job for you.

She hid her tools, and she made herself known, a ghost of a girl in the museums, on a bemused Tony’s arm

(she wouldn’t have done it, truly, but stane is a _snake_ and needs to know she’s older and meaner every so often)

(jarvis and rhodey are warned, as well)

and finally she sees him, walking so into her trap.

It should be… more, slaying a dragon, but one monster killing another is not, perhaps, newsworthy in a city so busy it does not sleep. She takes care with the body, the ashes, so he does not plague her again, but feels no tiredness in her bones, no sign that this ends her curse. 

She moves to Texas, because she never did learn the truth of Quincey's tales.

(there is work still to do)


End file.
